


Online and Tuned to You

by flitterflutterfly



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, M/M, Sentinel/Guide Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 11:19:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flitterflutterfly/pseuds/flitterflutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As they touched there was a flash of light that burned through his retina, and then what might have been the sound of drums.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Online and Tuned to You

**Author's Note:**

> Another one of those oneshots I may one day continue (I kinda doubt it, but there's always a possibility). Right now, it's just a pre-slash/bonding fic, because I was in a Sentinel mood.

Blair groaned, rubbing a hand on his face in an attempt to erase the memory of his day. He hadn’t had that much trouble with bigots since he had first come to Rainier for his PhD, after spending a couple years getting his two Masters at Harvard and coming online as a Guide.

He was the only online Guide at Rainier and one of the few in Cascade. He’d though he’d gotten past all the awkward questions and accusations. Yes, he was online. And yes, that meant that somewhere out there his Sentinel had come online too. But no, it wasn’t his fault that the Council had yet to find his Sentinel. There was frankly nothing he could do about it, not at this point.

Nothing except wait.

Blair sighed, hitching his bag higher up on his shoulder. He turned right, and then stopped suddenly, realizing he had no idea where he was.

“The hell?” Blair said out loud as he looked around him. He was on a main road, at least, but nowhere near his shady warehouse flat.

Frowning, Blair tried to remember where he had taken a wrong turn. And why.

That was when the panic of the nearby crowd hit him with a wave so strong he actually flinched. Something was happening up the street.

Blair rushed to the milling people without thought, not even noticing as he pushed his way through the crowd. It took him a moment, but he did eventually get a peak at what the commotion was about.

A man, dressed in plain khaki pants and a forest green button up shirt stood stock still, staring into nothing. Blair knew immediately what he was.

 _Sentinel_.

Suddenly scared, Blair knocked through the rest of the crowd until he broke through directly in front of the man. Several more people were up next to him, talking to the zoned Sentinel, touching his arm. Blair glanced at them each, registering quickly their lack of empathy. Maybe humans could get Sentinels out of very shallow zone-outs, but this Sentinel was already very deeply in his.

The man’s breathing was growing shallower and Blair pushed aside his own observations in favor of action.

“Move away, don’t crowd him,” Blair told the supposed helpers.

An older man grabbed his arm, to stop him Blair thought. He shook off the hand. “I’m a Guide,” Blair told the observers. “Step back, please, you can’t be so close to him. He’ll feel threatened when he comes back.”

The crowd shifted uneasily, but they all collectively gave Blair and the Sentinel more room. Blair took a step closer to the Sentinel and sucked in a deep breath.

“Sentinel, I need you to heed me,” he said calmly. “You must come back, Sentinel. There is dark, but it is not completely shadowed. A path is before you, a path made by my voice. Follow that path. Follow my voice.”

Blair searched the Sentinel’s face and placed a hand on the man’s bare neck. “Come back, Sentinel. You must let the darkness fade away, follow me.”

The Sentinel blinked suddenly and took a shuddering gasp of a breath. The crowd began to clap and cheer, spectators awed by the proof of the Sentinel-Guide dynamic playing out in front of them. Feeling the show was done, they began to disperse.

Blair went to pull away and give the Sentinel more room. The minute his hand left the Sentinel’s skin, however, he pinned Blair underneath an icy blue stare. Blair froze, unable to react as he was suddenly trapped in strong arms and tugged forward. The Sentinel buried his face into Blair’s neck and breathed deeply.

Blair couldn’t help the shiver that flowed through his body. The Sentinel lifted his head and once more he and Blair locked eyes.

Blair’s vision blacked out and then came back. He was in a jungle and for a moment he panicked, until a howl caught his attention and his spirit animal, a grey wolf, came loping up to him.

Blair put a shaking hand atop the wolf’s head and they turned to face the figures coming through the clearing. Blair’s eyes found the Sentinel first, immediately recognizing him, and then they moved onto the creature at the man’s side. It was a black panther, he thought dimly, or, his more analytical mind said, a jaguar. From the rainforest jungles of Central and Southern America.

The panther stared at him and his own spirit animal, those sharp yellow eyes seemingly missing nothing. Blair knew even before his wolf suddenly leaned against him just what was going on here. He’d never been connected enough with a Sentinel to see their spiritual plane, but without a doubt that was where he was now.

This wasn’t just any Sentinel. This was his. This was the man he’d come online for.

Well, probably. Supposedly there were several Sentinels around the world that he was compatible with, just as there were likely several Guides for this Sentinel. Coming online together was usually an indicator of such compatibility, and of close proximity, but bonding can take between those that were not yet online as well.

The Sentinel had walked to the middle of the clearing. His spirit animal was in front of him, looking every inch as deadly as the man it represented. Blair’s fingers tightened in his wolf’s fur, stopping it from going forward to the panther. Once the two spirit animals touched, he and the Sentinel would be irrevocably bonded.

It seemed as though the Sentinel saw his reservation, his face becoming hard. Blair breathed in, not wanting to make such a gigantic decision before he knew anything about the man. This, he realized, was why the Council advocated for chaperoned meetings between a compatible Sentinel-Guide pair before allowing them to initiate the bonding process. If Blair let his wolf do his thing here, it would be a joining of their souls. After that, then the statistical likelihood of Blair ever being able to find pleasure in the body of anyone other than this man was something like 2.333%.

Not that the Sentinel was unattractive, because he certainly wasn’t. Not by a long shot. But, despite what some of his colleagues thought, Blair was not someone to choose a life partner by just the handsomeness of his face.

One couldn’t talk on the spiritual plane, but Blair still had his gifts. He anchored himself on his wolf and drew in the aura that he knew the Sentinel had wrapped invisibly around his body.

Where Sentinel’s gifts had them extend their senses and search outwards, Guides were a different breed all together. They were, in a way, a whirlpool, catching any strong impression from the beings around them and pulling them in. Unless they had a Sentinel to protect them and give them control, that is. The same control that was gotten from the bond for Guides held true for Sentinels, allowing them to reach out farther with their senses and worry less about the zone-out factor.

Blair was a strong Guide, possibly shaman level, and even in the real world he had a certain measure of control over his empathy. But this was the spirit world and here he was more than just strong.

The first reading Blair got from the Sentinel was that of determination, a deep will to do what’s right. Not honestly that surprising, giving that any Sentinel’s biological code screamed for them to be keepers of justice. Still, it made Blair smile as he pulled more, only to frown as the first wave of frustration lashed at him. Frustration? He wondered and tried to find the source.

There was some measure of it directed towards the outside world, that was what lashed out at Blair, but a greater measure was directed at the Sentinel himself. Blair bit his bottom lip, worried, and then mentally grabbed a huge chunk of the man’s aura and tugged it.

The power of the Sentinel’s core hit him like a lightning strike, an unexpected storm of emotions battering at him. He took a step back against it, overwhelmed by the force. Alpha, he thought. So much strength in this man and so repressed by the need to be out there, working with the people. An Alpha without a Guide was a sorry state.

The Sentinel shifted and suddenly the storm lessened, now more of a warm drizzle than a tormenting fury. Blair breathed a sigh of relief and opened his eyes which he realized he’d close in the process of weathering that emotional storm.

Blair’s gaze tracked the man’s larger build, the broadness of his shoulder and stubborn sculpt of his jaw. Then Blair’s eyes moved up to meet the Sentinel’s own once again. Even now, with the man’s aura encompassing him, he couldn’t read the expression in those blue orbs.

His wolf pressed hard against his thigh for just a moment, before it took a step forward.

Blair breathed in deeply, steadying himself, and let go of his spirit animal’s fur. The Sentinel’s eyes widened, at once understanding as his black panther came to meet the wolf halfway.

As they touched there was a flash of light that burned through his retina, and then what might have been the sound of drums.

Blair blinked.

He was back on the sidewalk, still in the arms of the man who was now his Sentinel. _His_. The man’s grip loosened and he stepped back slightly, keeping one hand on Blair’s arm. Blair allowed the hand, knowing the Sentinel needed as much physical contact as possible, especially in the first fortnight of the new bond.

 _Bond_. The word has Blair gulping and tentatively reaching around himself with his mind. The Sentinel’s aura met his search, shielding and protecting him. He felt no emotions but that warm and steady flow from the man. The shield wasn’t outside him, though, not like it had been on the spirit plain. No, it was just on his skin, less like he was swimming in it and more like it was a suit he was wearing. It was, remarkably, comforting.

His Sentinel’s lips twitched, as if sensing his astonishment, and Blair blushed.

“Sir?" 

Blair turned to the voice, meeting the worried and curious glances, the leftovers of the earlier crowd. He hadn’t even sensed that they were there, their emotions blocked for him. He frowned, unsure that he liked this new development.

His Sentinel’s arm came to wrap around his torso from behind. Blair leaned back into the man’s steady chest, knowing there was nothing he could do to change anything now and not entirely sure that he would have made a different choice regardless. “We’re fine.”

Blair could see as understanding began to dawn on the few who’d attempted to help his Sentinel in the beginning. One of them bowed. “Congratulations on your bonding.”

His Sentinel—Blair really needed to learn him name—tightened his grip. “Our thanks,” he said in a low voice that rumbled against Blair’s back. 

The man who’d spoken nodded to the Sentinel, careful now to not look at Blair too openly. This man knew what he was doing, Blair noted. It wasn’t safe to pay too much attention to a newly bonded Guide lest their Sentinel take the notice as a challenge. Sentinels could be possessive like that.

The man ushered the rest away and then Blair was being turned around to face his Sentinel.

“What’s your name?” his Sentinel asked.

“Blair Sandburg,” Blair answered immediately.

“I’m James Ellison,” his Sentinel said back. “But my friends call me Jim.”

Blair smiled slowly. “It’s nice to meet you, Jim.”

Jim, his Sentinel Jim, quirked a smile back.


End file.
